How China's Ultra Wealthy Misrepresents Chinese Americans

$2,000 LV chopsticks just sold out on their website. But why? Welcome everybody to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. Louis Vuitton has just sold out of their monogram gold color chopsticks on their website that retailed for $1,640. It went viral with the TikToker who covers luxury goods recently. David, but what's the real question here? Does French owned Louis Vuitton selling out of $2,000 chopsticks make Chinese consumers look kind of silly? It's a good question. Before we get into it, make sure you hit that like button. If you're liking the Hot Pop Boys series, that's going to help us out. Okay, let's talk about it. David, what are your first thoughts here? Man. Does it make Chinese consumers look silly? Because we can assume most of the chopsticks were sold to rich Chinese people. Yeah. They were probably sold to rich new money Chinese. They got rich within the last 10 to 20 years. First off, I do want to say that I don't think it was all Chinese consumers buying these. Obviously, there was a lot of outrage or jokes on the internet from people who were like, dude, I would never buy that. Even people with $2,000. A lot of people have $2,000. But just would you buy chopsticks that you can get on a usage level for less than a penny? Yes. That's how much disposable chopsticks cost. But of course, you're paying for the holder. You're paying for the flex. Does it mean that pretty much Chinese consumers will buy anything that is luxurious in French at any price? Because I have it hard to believe the Chinese people would ever buy metal embossed chopsticks from themselves. I'm not saying there wasn't fancy chopsticks that were heavily engraved, almost like artwork that were pricey. But these aren't even real gold. There's no metal meltdown value. I see the ridiculousness of it. But as the person between the two who spent the money to pay for the Supreme hair clippers and the Supreme chopsticks, which I don't know where they're at anymore. So clearly, I don't value them that much. I kind of see the appeal, especially if you have the money. Now, I would never buy these, even if someone dropped $2,000 in front of me at this moment. But I kind of think it's kind of like anything hypebeast related, like Supreme put out a hammer and Supreme put out a brick. It was being kind of trolly and kind of like tongue in cheek when they did that. But I guess if LVMH is like, yeah, you know, you know, the Chinese is a big market. So, you know, we paint them gold and then we sell them the tool. But like LVMH in 2022 is almost more like a streetwear brand than like high fashion luxury. It's kind of hype. They adopted that mentality. And I heard that it was a big internal battle for a while. They're like, we want to be classy. We think streetwear is trashy. But then they're just looking at the market dynamics and they totally they gave in to give people what they want. First of all, shout out to LVMH. They send us some Hennessy. So if the market demands it, LVMH is well within their right to provide it. Now, I think this brings up two questions. Why does the market want it? Because I think only Chinese people would want these. I do not think Japanese, Koreans or even Vietnamese people would want these. It seems like only Chinese people would buy these if like I'm just guessing in my mind. Uh-huh. Well, it kind of also brings up another question of like, how many new money Chinese are there? And a lot of people don't understand, David, that although maybe new money people in China only make up a small percentage, let's say 1%. Less than 1%. Let's just say 1%, which is actually a lot. But let's just say 1%. But there's 1.2 billion people in China. That 1% is like millions of people. What's like a country of rich new money. And I'm not saying all of China's new money. And Andrew, one of the things we are going to do is we are going to build lots of products for that country of rich new Chinese with kind of quote unquote, at least trashy tastes. Okay. So it is a little bit trashy, but they're chopsticks. It's a tool. It's not like a golden dildo or something. It's a chopstick. Anyways, but I'm saying so it's not that trashy because it's a tool that we use every day for food. And it's a traditional Chinese invention. Like I think it's safe to say Chinese invented. So it's funny because it's a combination of very traditional Chinese culture, but you just put it in a LV pouch and make it gold and then you sell it. Why do you think that other Asians probably would not buy these? Okay. So I think there's a couple layers here because let's just talk about Koreans, for example, because Koreans are known to be pretty stylish. They're the hot Asians right now. And they probably wouldn't buy the gold chopsticks because I don't think Koreans love gold as much. And that might have to go back to religion a little bit. They tend to be more stone oriented. Yeah. But to say that if LVMH didn't release like some type of Korean Hanbok design that some Koreans wouldn't buy it. I don't know. I think it'd sell out if they made like 100 of them. Yeah. They have the Seoul Air Max 97. Now it's true. Japan better design a little bit more like Scandinavian and thinking more minimalistic. Right. Muji, Uniqlo, Ikea, Yoji Yamamoto, Volkswagen. They all kind of blend together. Everybody respects Japanese design, of course. So yeah, you'd like to think that Japanese people are above this, but bathing ape, Japanese brand kind of played with gaudiness a little bit. I think Nigo could drop some bathing ape chopsticks. I don't know if he did. I think he did. And maybe they'd sell maybe to Chinese people. But what do you think it is about like Chinese consumers that people both cater to? But in the fashion world, obviously people feel like the Chinese designers or the Chinese consumption patterns are still like on their way up and coming. Whereas they view like Japanese consumers and Japanese designers as so like bleeding edge or super future, like just on some other futuristic thinking. Man, it all goes back to like. It actually goes back to a human development index and ancient culture. Those two things. Oh, and I was just going to say also just representation where it's kind of like inserting Fan Bingbing into random American action movies. You're also going to just slip in the $2,000 golden chopsticks, right? I mean, what do you think? Yeah. I mean, I'm surprised that when Apple released those Chinese New Year, Year of the Tiger AirPods, they weren't gold. I think this whole thing of catering to this very small but low key sort of big like new money Chinese market is going to continue. So you're going to continue to see ridiculous things. What do you think, Andrew? We got to answer this question. What do you think? Like the American born Chinese that oftentimes came over here and their grandparents were either at best middle class, maybe a few upper middle, but mostly like even lower middle or came in poverty. How are they viewing these like new Chinese that are all these like luxury lifestyle people on TikTok and Douyin and Instagram? Like I would say, yeah, it is interesting to see because it's kind of like a question. Like do we relate to this or not? I find it appealing in a way because I was like, I use chopsticks. That's kind of cool. But also on the other side, I'm like, I would never even spend this much. Even if I was a billionaire, I don't know if I'd buy them. You know what I mean? Like, so it's kind of weird to see that there is a segment of Chinese people whom I relate to on some level, but they want like completely ridiculous things as far as like materials go. And obviously there's not all international Chinese kids, not all international Chinese kids are rich, but there is a segment of them that are very rich. So it's kind of, I guess it's weird, but I don't know. It's kind of semi hard to relate to sometimes. You're talking about $2,000 chopsticks at $200 per person hot pot versus one penny chopsticks at $30 all you can eat hot pot. Bro, the craziest trip for an Asian American is like, if you have a good job and you spend like $1,600 on a trip to Vegas altogether, that's like crazy, you know, but these people are dropping in on chopsticks. Okay, going back to the original question though, does LV selling these chopsticks to Chinese consumers make Chinese consumers look kind of silly? Say it. I do think it does. I think it looks silly. I think it looks like exactly what it is. I'm not mad at it. I'm glad that people are going through it. I'm very curious to see where like Chinese consumer tastes as well as design aesthetics go past this level. But while we're here, by all means, capitalistic companies are more than willing to extract a lot of money from these people. What if we looked at it this way, that this is the peak of ridiculous, gaudy, new money, Chinese consumerism where you sold chopsticks. Can it get any more frivolous than buying $2,000 chopsticks? Maybe this is the peak. Maybe Chinese consumers after this are learning and they're like, hey man, I got the chopsticks already. How much more like stuff are you going to make for me? It's very interesting to see because if, even if you take a look at Europe, for example, like Anglos and like Scandals and like Slavs or whatever, you know, your major European tribes, they all actually have different ideas on luxury and lifestyle. I personally have hopes that the rich Chinese consumers, as the new money turns into a little bit less new money and then older money, they're going to get classier. Maybe people won't be able to sell these types of things in the future. Personally, I'm okay with the branded chopsticks. Listen, I guess if you have the money and you want to buy them, I guess it's still supporting Asian culture. I bought the stupid Supreme chopsticks and I lost them. So I feel it. Times my money by 100. And yeah, maybe you buy these. I just want to know what else do Chinese people use like every day? I mean, hopefully we can do like a monogram version of that. Yo, David, think about it in the room where like LV is trying to think of these ideas. You think they're bringing in like just random Chinese people? Ah, you know, Xiaoping, why don't you tell me what are some of the everyday things you use like a toothpaste? I think something very Chinese would be maybe a calligraphy book that's covered in LV or potentially, to be honest, a math drill book cover. Oh, wow. Oh, abacus, a luxury abacus. Okay. And then what's another one? I'm thinking gold bags of rice. I don't know. It's trivial as you want it to be on the shallow side. And there's so many layers to analyze it on the deeper side. Let us know how you're thinking about it. Do you agree, disagree with us? Want to augment what we said? Please let us know in the comment section below. Like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. And until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. Peace.